Sept. 13, 2013

“I am urging you to treat Elizabeth Kelly as you would treat anyone else with the same case file.  I am asking you to demonstrate that we are all ‘equal under the law.’  Any other inmate with the same sentence and clean record would have been eligible for parole the minute she walked through the gates of the prison…. I am appealing to you not to withhold that which she would otherwise likely receive — minus her publicity, minus the rhetoric of politicians.  I am imploring you not to deal more strictly with her than with others simply because she is Elizabeth Kelly.”

– From a letter to the North Carolina Parole Commission by Jane W. Duffield of Raleigh  (April 5, 1994)

The Parole Commission proved unable or unwilling to consider Betsy Kelly’s case “minus her publicity, minus the rhetoric of politicians.” Bill Hart, vengeful over her unwavering insistence that she was innocent, reneged on a plea agreement not to contest her release, and the Parole Commission obediently sent her back for seven more months of wrongful imprisonment.

Dec. 12, 2017

“Sadly, we’ve grown accustomed to gross miscarriages of justice in cases involving minorities and the indigent. Appalled as we are by such legal travesties we rationalize it as the consequences of traditional bigotry.

“But there is no racial component to the Little Rascals case. There isn’t even much of a class component, since the defendants and their accusers were for the most part, equals. With the exception of a couple jurors, all the characters are white and comfortably middle-class.

“Neither is there any effect of drug abuse or any other kind of aberrant psychology.

“If anything, the Little Rascals case is a study of female/maternal vengeance, since the Kellys’ foremost accusers were Betsy Kelly’s friends, the mothers of the children entrusted to her care. Likewise the vast majority of court-appointed therapists and counselors were female, as was the most prominent of the three prosecutors.

“The story is a riveting study of mass psychosis, of the willingness, ability and need of well- educated, civilized people to believe something in the face of a near total absence of logic and extraordinary cruelty to friends and neighbors….”

– From “A ‘Frontline’ documentary on child abuse hysteria shows how good TV can be” by Brian Lambert in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press (May 27, 1997)

Aug. 28, 2013

“It’s not by chance that day care centers are the sites of magical molestation, and not public schools with their powerful lobbies and unions…. Those primary and secondary school teachers’ organizations provide protection and security for their members, much as the AMA protects doctors and the ABA protects lawyers.

“It’s only you – a day care teacher – who has no protection at all. If hysterical parents gang up and attack you, you are as helpless as a clay pigeon in a shooting gallery.”

– From “Magical Child Molestation Trials: Edenton’s Children Accuse” by Margaret Leong (1993)

Feb. 8, 2013

“Your honor, ladies and gentlemen, this is a case about trust and betrayal of trust… trust placed in the hands of Ray Buckey and Peggy Buckey.  Parents who will testify will tell you… they didn’t ask about activities that were going on at the preschool. They didn’t piece together the clues they were getting from their children. These parents will tell you they now understand the importance of listening. The case contains 100 felony counts of Section 288-A and B, and one count of conspiracy….

“Betrayal! These innocent children placed their trust in these two teachers and the teachers betrayed them…. One mother observed her two daughters performing oral copulation on each other. Another mother saw a sore rectum in her child. She will tell you she did not want to go to school, did not want to sit on her father’s lap and that she ran through the house singing, ‘What you see is what you are/ You’re a naked movie star.’

“One mother will tell you that she saw her daughter masturbating with a wooden pole. One mother will tell you that her children had nightmares.  One mother will tell you that her child had a rectal fissure. Another mother will tell you she saw bloody stools when her child went to the bathroom.  Then, the people will ask you to bring back verdicts on all 100 counts….”

– From Deputy District Attorney Lael Rubin’s opening statement in the McMartin Preschool ritual-abuse case

After the jury acquitted the Buckeys on 52 counts and deadlocked on 13 counts, Rubin complained that “They were lucky. I just hope to God that years from now we don’t hear about Ray Buckey molesting children…. I don’t think I would do anything different.”

Rubin seems to have been almost as graceless a loser as Nancy Lamb, doesn’t she? Almost.